Book Talk: The New Silk Road

Please join us for talk by Ben Simpfendorfer, who will be introducing his new book The New Silk Road – How a Rising Arab World is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China. It is a groundbreaking investigation into the rise of the Arab world and its strengthening relations with China.

The Arab world is rising. Dubai’s skyline is jammed with gleaming skyscrapers. Foreign banks are opening in Syria’s business districts. Yet the Arab world isn’t rising alone. It’s matched by an emerging China. The timing isn’t a coincidence. The two are historic powers once connected by one of the world’s great trade corridors. The New Silk Road tells the stories of Arab traders in Chinese coastal cities. It explains why Arabic-speaking Chinese officials appear on Al Jazeera. It explores how Chinese traders are using Syria as an entry point to the Arab world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ben Simpfendorfer is the Chief China Economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong and was previously the Senior China Economist at JPMorgan. He has lived in Beirut, Damascus, Beijing and Hong Kong. He appears regularly on Bloomberg and CNBC and is quoted in the Financial Times and The New York Times. Simpfendorfer speaks Arabic and Chinese and has spent fifteen years assessing economic data from the two regions.